“It’s no excuse, but he didn’t get the news he was hoping for today. He’s been impossible ever since,” Laura says. “Is there anything worse than a writer with a bruised ego?”
“You were responsible for his big break, weren’t you?”
Laura’s eyes swivel to meet Graye’s. “You’ve done your homework.”
“I read about him before I applied to be his TA,” Graye admits.
It isn’t exactly an untruth.
“Well, that’s the official story.” Laura fans her hands outward in front of her face. “‘Book blogger launches career of debut novelist and finds romance made in literary heaven.’”
Laura shakes her head, a rueful smile on her face. “The truth is, David would have made it with or without me. But the association was marketing gold. I got tagged with the label influential, and that made me so in the process. David and I both benefitted from that. We still do. Not so romantic when you put it that way, is it?”
“But you got him an agent, then a publishing contract, didn’t you?”
“Me?” She shakes her head. “No. All I did was make an introduction. My father’s in publishing, that much is true, but David’s book sold itself. If it hadn’t been so brilliant, I could have made a million introductions and it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Graye says nothing but senses Laura is downplaying her role in igniting her husband’s success. David West isn’t the only author she’s been the first to champion. Laura’s name can be found in the acknowledgments of more than a few award-winning novels. She has an eye for spotting talent.
“And how do you find working for the literary genius moonlighting as a guest professor?” Laura’s expression is warm as she watches Graye, like she’s equally as interested in the answer as she is in mocking her husband.
“It’s fine,” Graye mumbles.
Laura’s brows shoot up. She leans back in her chair, wine glass dangling from her fingertips.
Graye squirms under the scrutiny. “He mostly ignores me,” she admits.
Laura sends her a small, understanding smile in reward for her honesty.
“Don’t take it personally,” Laura says. “You’re not his type. Too astute to fall for his bullshit.”
Graye blushes at the compliment. “You did, though,” she blurts, then raises a hand to her mouth, eyes widening at her own words.
But Laura laughs. The sound pours down Graye’s skin, soothing her nerves better than wine.
“I did, indeed,” Laura says. “I’d blame it on youth or naivete, but it’s been a while since anyone has accused me of either. Yet here I am.”
“His first novel . . . it was stunning.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Laura glances in the direction David has disappeared. “Sometimes I wonder where that man has gone.”
6
Along the street outside her apartment, Graye walks with her head down. As usual, she’s overlooked by most. She’s a strikingly unremarkable girl.
But tonight, shadows and plainness can’t shield her completely. A pair of eyes follows as she makes her way up the street, moving unobtrusively through the crowd. Graye’s shoulders are hunched, her gaze pointing downward, as she steps out of the way of people moving in the opposite direction.
Fascinated, a single set of eyes notices the way she claims no space of her own, only glides like mist around the edges of the space taken up by others.
If these eyes hadn’t been seeking her out, waiting for her to appear, she would have slipped past unnoticed by one and all. But for tonight, Graye Templeton claims the full attention of an audience of one.
Once she’s gone up the stairs and through her front door, the eyes stay trained on her apartment windows and the play of shadows behind them as Graye moves around the room above.
The sound and laughter of passersby come and go. The watcher remains late into the night. One unseen person who contemplates the house of cards Graye Templeton has built her life on and the aftermath a gust of wind might leave behind.
7
GRAYE
Graye fumbles with her keys as she unlocks the door to her drab little apartment.
She shouldn’t have had so much wine, but she relishes the unfamiliar sensations. She spent the bus ride home with her eyes shut tightly, replaying the conversations, the smiles, the barbs.
Dr. West is . . . a disappointment. There have been signs. The pedestal she constructed for him was already shaky. Seeing him in his natural state has kicked it completely away, leaving her preconceived image of him floundering helplessly on the ground.
Graye regrets that before taking the job, she never thought to ask his former TA what David West was like. Unfortunately, there’d been no opportunity. Zoe’s departure from the position was sudden, and Graye had been dazzled by the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with the famous author.
She had such hopes.
But Laura . . . Laura is a surprise.
Her phone vibrates in her pocket, bringing those thoughts to a sharp halt.
Graye doesn’t need to check the number. She knows who’s trying to reach her. She takes her time locking the door behind her before answering the call.
“Sister Margaret.” The deference in her tone hasn’t changed much over the years. As a child of nine, Graye was in awe of the nun who greeted her on her first day at St. Sebastian’s Home for Girls. She still is.
“Graye, my dear.” The sister’s voice travels many miles and lands in the same vacant spot in Graye’s heart it always has.
“I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls, Sister,” Graye says. “I received your letter.”
As she perches on the edge of the chair at her desk, Graye’s posture is unconsciously straight and correct. She runs a hand across the front of the drawer where she shoved the letter and news article out of sight. She can’t bring herself to open it.
“I wish you had, Graye. I wanted to tell you by phone, so you’d be better prepared for the news.”
She had known, though. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she’d always known. A perpetual clock had begun a countdown from the moment those bars had slammed closed. Eventually, that clock was bound to stop, and those same bars would swing open again. Graye simply chose not to dwell on it.
Until now.
“But I’m safe here, Sister. Aren’t I?”
Graye waits for reassurance from the austere woman she’s known for fifteen years.
“Most likely.” Sister Margaret sighs. “But you must be aware of these things, Graye. Ignorance serves no one.”
Graye rises to pace the small room. She double-checks the lock on the door.
“It was so long ago. I’ve made a new life. I’m no threat.”
Graye moves to the large windows and peeks out through the blinds. She scans the street below. Nothing appears out of the ordinary.
“I hope, for your sake, that’s true.”
Graye lets go of the blinds and they spring back into place with a clatter.
After the evening she’s had, the apprehension the nun’s letter shook loose in her that morning feels far away. A silly little girl’s irrational fears.
She pulls on her bottom lip and debates sharing her news. That she’s possibly made a friend.
It’s a rare thing.
Graye can count on one hand the number of friends she’s had. Natalie, of course. Before that there was Autumn, a girl from the foster home. They’d been so close, in the way only childhood friends can be, yet their lives had taken different paths. They’d drifted apart.
She lives alone now. It’s better that way.
In the end, she holds her tongue. Sister Margaret won’t understand.
“How are you otherwise, Graye?”
“I’m well, Sister.” Graye grasps the opportunity to turn the subject away from the past. “I’m working. My master’s is almost finished.”
“And you’re still writing?”
A small smile flickers across Graye’s lips. “Yes.”
“Writing has always been your salvation, Graye. But don’t forget to pick your head up from time to time. To live.”
Graye thinks of Laura, of her warmth and her welcoming smile. Of how easy it would have been to move through one more day without connecting to another person, safely buffered as always by her anonymity and anxiety.
“I’m trying, Sister. I am.”
After the nun has said her goodbyes, Graye pulls in a deep breath.
The past is just that. Gone, with nothing but hazy, painted-over memories as reminders.
Most of the time anyway. Except when the memories come alive and crowd in on her. But that hasn’t happened in a very long time.
She’s safe. She is.
She needs to believe that.
Opening her desk drawer, Graye retrieves the manuscript pages she keeps neatly stacked there.
She sits and removes two felt-tip pens. One black, for words and thoughts to be added.
The other red.
She carefully lifts the cover page and sets it aside as she uncaps the red pen.
Red is to cut.
Graye falls into the words on the page.
These words are her truth. Her life. These words will finally make Graye Templeton a reality, cementing her existence and her worth.
Once these words are published for the world, she’ll never again be Gracie Thacker, playing pretend. She’ll be real.
Graye can’t suppress the hope that her new friend might be able to help her do that.
But first, everything must be perfect. Stunningly, brilliantly perfect.
The red bleeds onto the page. A small cut here. A larger, deeper cut there.
Perfect.
8
MARGARET
Sister Margaret sets the receiver of the phone softly back in place. Quick footsteps patter across the floor above her head.
Janie, out of bed again.
She’s spoken with the child time and again about using the facilities before bedtime so she doesn’t disturb the other girls in the night, but she can’t be cross with her.
Janie hasn’t wet her bed in months, and Margaret prefers to celebrate the victories, no matter how small.
Heaven knows the girls have enough battles to fight.
She leans back in the office chair and closes her eyes, replaying the conversation with Graye.
Had there been a hint of secrecy in her words? She sighs. She can’t be certain without seeing the girl’s face.
But Graye isn’t a child anymore. She’s a woman now. In truth, even as a child she’d seemed an old soul.
She’s never forgotten the look in Graye’s eyes when she arrived at St. Sebastian’s. A mixture of fragile hope and a foregone resignation that her hope was bound to be crushed beneath inevitable disappointment.
Margaret’s heart had cracked down the center as she stood there in the entryway with the sun streaming through the tall double doors. The child was illuminated from behind, as if light were a thing she was headed away from, with only dim and dusty shadows in her future.
But that was an illusion. A darkness lay in Graye’s past. A darkness more damning than a little girl standing with her fingers gripped on the handle of a small suitcase could possibly comprehend.
Sister Margaret listens to the sound of Janie making her way back to bed and scrubs her palms across her face. She wonders, as always, if she’s done the right thing.
She pulls the newspaper article from her pocket, a copy of the same one she clipped and mailed to Graye, and unfolds it flat upon the desk.
It’s dated several weeks prior, and shows wear from traveling in her pocket for so long. She reads the headline again, though she doesn’t need to. The words are branded upon her memory.
NOTORIOUS TEEN MURDERER TO BE RELEASED
The grainy photo below the words pulls her gaze, and she stares, hypnotized.
Grace Thacker lost her entire family on that long-ago night.
What followed was a media feeding frenzy. The trial of the decade, they called it. And the lynchpin for the prosecution was the videotaped testimony of nine-year-old Grace, who witnessed it all.
After the trial, the little girl promptly disappeared from the public eye, never to be seen or heard from again. Not that there weren’t plenty who tried to find her.
Margaret prays time and miles will be enough to protect Graye now, but the hatred and the emptiness in the eyes peering back at her from the black-and-white photograph mock that hope.
The past is coming for Graye. She can feel it, in spite of her reassurances to the girl on the phone.
It’s coming for them all.
9
The cinder girl’s sister has found her prince, but Mother isn’t pleased.
He hails from a faraway land, filled with dark, dangerous customs, and the road to reach it is long and treacherous.
“He’s not the prince for you,” Mother declares, and that’s where it might have stayed.
But Sister’s heart is won, and the prince hoards his prize.
“Let her come with me,” he says. “Your daughter will be a conquering queen. It is her desire.”
Mother resists.
“If you do not, I will go all the same, and I will take her heart, for it is mine. In its place, I’ll leave nothing but a lump of clay, rolled in broken glass. She’ll soon wither and die.”
Still, Mother refuses. “Leave, then. My daughter doesn’t need the heart you’ve stolen. She can have mine.”
The prince shakes his head, confused. “Why do you hold so tightly, Mother? What is one daughter when you have a second?”
The cinder girl stands straighter, her back and shoulders strong. Mother laughs, but there is no joy in the sound.
“How dare you speak of things you don’t understand? The one you want has been trained to spin wool into gold. What good to me is the one you’d leave? A pack mule to cart her sister’s things.”
Mother laughs her mirthless laugh again, but the prince does not return it.
His eyes fall upon the cinder girl, and she sees a sparkle on his cheek.
No, she thinks, a trick of the light. Not a tear. No one cries for me.
“You leave me no choice, Mother,” the prince declares. “Your daughter must come. She cannot survive from your heart alone, for you lie. You have none.”
LAURA
The slamming door startles Laura from her daydream, and her elbow unbalances a pile of papers and books stacked on the desk. Her hands shoot out to try to stop the avalanche, but it does no good.
She sighs as the detritus of her professional life scatters and slides across the floor, helped along by the breeze from the open windows that carries the scent and murmur of the ocean.
Footsteps approach.
“I thought you were going to get this crap organized.” David leans against the doorjamb.
Laura blows back the hair hanging in her face but clamps her jaw on the retort that springs up.
For all his grumbling about moving to a kitschy beach town on the edge of the world, he’s shed New York in layers and replaced it with a darkening tan, a continual five o’clock shadow, and a growing collection of linen shorts.
The regular presence of a drink in his hand completes the Hemingway-esque transformation.
Laura has been in Port Mary for six months. The first three, she spent alone, reacquainting herself with the island and the workings of the hotel—she inherited her grandmother’s majority shares. But after an initial assessment, she’s pleased with the way things are being run. This left her free to spend most of her time unpacking and preparing the carriage house for David’s arrival.
His office was beautifully organized before he even set his suitcase down. Laura positioned his antique desk with a view of the beach. She stocked the drawers with the brands of paper and pens he preferred, then added a mini-fridge within arm’s reach, filled to his tastes. Not that he noticed her efforts, but there’s little else she can do to help David
.
The furrow in his brow and distraction in his eyes tells her an organized office hasn’t lent him any more creative spark today than it did the day before. Or the day before that.
But asking about his work will only make her a target for his frustration.
When she was younger and cared more, his biting sarcasm could wound, but these days she turns a deaf ear to his tortured-artist moods.
“I think I need to cast a wider net if I’m going to find an assistant,” she says, purposely turning the conversation in a direction he’ll find tiresome as she leans down to scoop up the mess.
“None of the applicants up to your exacting standards?” He casts a pointed glance around her wreck of a workspace.
She stares at him for a beat, struggling to remind herself of the man she knows he can be—when he isn’t being this one.
It’s getting more difficult every day to bring that man to mind.
Something of her thoughts must show on her face, and a brief and rare flash of contrition passes over David’s own.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asks.
An olive branch. And with the precision of a master strategist, he sets her back on her heels.
Laura’s stomach tightens as an uneasy guilt fills her. For all his failings, she’s far from blameless.
She’s betrayed him. In the most elemental of ways, knowingly and deliberately, she’s betrayed his trust.
His attitude isn’t the only thing chipping away at their marriage.
“David,” she says, plunging forward before she can second-guess her timing. “We need to talk.”
The concern he’s pasted onto his face fades and he stiffens.
She recognizes her mistake immediately.
“If you’ve found something new to harp on, Laura, I’d just as soon—”
“No,” she says. “It’s nothing like that.”
She’s put him on the defensive. She’s going about this all wrong.
It’s hard to say which of them is more relieved to hear the doorbell chime.
“I’ll get it,” he says, tossing a darkened look in her direction.
The Shadow Writer Page 3
